That
Sinn Fein has an authoritarian leadership is self
evident. As the Irish Examiner stated the
day after the party's policing ard fheis, "it's
symptomatic of the complete command and hold that
Adams has on republicanism that yesterday's vote
was portrayed as a victory, as a breakthrough…"
But it does not follow that authoritarianism necessarily
leads to silly decisions as it did on this occasion.
It
was a short sighted but grave strategic error
for the former republican party to approve the
policy shift on the British PSNI by such a huge
majority at the end of a conference likened more
to a procession than a debate. Delegate after
delegate telling the leadership just how great
it is hardly qualifies as a debate. Moreover,
the absence of proper discussion manifested in
the almost unanimous support for an endorsement
of the PSNI, rather than the decision to support
the PSNI per se, has handed the DUP a significant
tactical advantage.
The
displacement of a debating chamber by a sycophant
convention was an ill-judged move that will ultimately
undermine Sinn Fein's negotiating strength. The
party decision to support the British PSNI may
well mean that the ball has been tossed into the
DUP court but the margin of victory will deprive
Sinn Fein of any strategic advantage over the
DUP that it would otherwise have secured. Paisley's
party will be able to claim that the ball kicked
by Sinn Fein has landed in a small court and the
space in which to manoeuvre unlike Sinn Fein's
is heavily constricted. Dissent, it will be said,
is more widespread and exists at higher levels
within the party than in Sinn Fein. The situational
logic is such that, as a consequence, Adams' movement
will be asked by the big government players to
pony up again. It is the price a caudillo can
expect to pay when he prioritises showing to the
world just how loved a leader he is over any concerns
he may have about ceding ground to an opponent.
Sinn
Fein seems not to have learned from the Trimble
experience. The then UUP leader used his internal
weakness as a negotiating strength until such
times as the Blair government heeded its NIO mandarins
and decided that a deal was more doable if the
DUP were to lead unionism. Because there were
always critics biting at his heels of the UUP
leader, the imperative to 'save Dave' concentrated
the minds and consumed the time of the British
government in particular. David Trimble could
always point to a seemingly innocuous leadership
contender such as Martin Smith making an effective
challenge to his leadership. Trimble won the day
by 57 to 43. Adams as a party leader never faced
a challenge like that.
An
insight into the way in which the British reckoned
they could always calculate on the Sinn Fein leadership
to deliver British state objectives at the end
of the day came when a British ambassador said
to a prominent Irish journalist at a function
in Dublin that Adams and McGuinness could always
push through what was necessary; they were Stalinists
after all. Dean Godson's Trimble tome Himself
Alone illustrates all very well how Sinn Fein
could not comprehend the concept of internal resistance
to the leadership within unionism. The Adams team
forever badgered why Trimble couldn't just manage
his base.
Sinn
Fein has managed its base and managed it well,
but only in so far as it has served internal management
purposes. In the wider strategic arena the suffocation
of grass roots autonomy may have freed the leadership
from the constraints of its own base but it has
left it a hostage to fortune. Unable in future
negotiations to cite the circumscribing power
of a critical base, Sinn Fein has room only to
cede even more ground to a DUP able to channel
the pressure generated from within its own ranks
into a negotiating pincer designed to hold what
it has and take what it has not. Whether it continues
to insist on sackcloth and ashes or not, theocratic
unionism stands poised, bible in hand, to smite
those deemed to have sinned against its state.
